BATON ROUGE, La. -- The idea for this week's “Position U” series actually came about during spring football practice at LSU -- which I assume some of you know was my first covering the Tigers.

During post-practice interviews with Tigers players, it was common to hear defensive backs refer to LSU as “DBU” (short for “Defensive Back University) when discussing the team's proud decision in the secondary. After hearing that over and over for a while, I started thinking about how to ascertain whether that was actually the case.

Is LSU actually DBU? How would you even measure that? It seemed like a fun game to play during the summer when we don't have any football to actually watch, so I came up with a formula, pitched it to the bosses and set out to determine which major programs (I tallied results for each member of the big five conferences for 2014, plus independents Notre Dame and BYU -- 66 schools in all) deserve to claim the title at each position for the 2000s.

So I gathered the results of every NFL draft, each of 20 college football's top individual awards, coaches' first-team all-conference selections and consensus All-America picks for each season since 2000-01 and came up with a point system to reward those accomplishments. The team with the most points won the “Position U” title for the 2000s.

It isn't a perfect system -- for instance Notre Dame deserves to rank toward the top of the list at tight end, but the Fighting Irish is penalized in this system by not playing in a conference and thus losing out on that category of points -- and I actually considered leaving the independents out of the equation. I decided, however, to include them and simply include that asterisk within the stories.

The system is also generous to programs such as Louisville that competed in smaller conferences and earned points against lesser competition before jumping into the bigger pond of major-conference football. But otherwise, I think keeping things simple and basing it on the criteria I selected is an effective way of gauging overall excellence.

So since this is an LSU blog, let's take a quick look at how the Tigers fared -- and there was plenty of excellence to gauge:

Quarterback: Tied for 16th place with 32 points. No. 1 overall NFL draft pick JaMarcus Russell is the headliner here as one of only two LSU first-team all-conference picks and as the only QB to go in the first three rounds. The Tigers had six QBs drafted overall.

Wide receiver: Second with 124 points. I was well aware of LSU's numerous star wideouts through the years, but I have to admit being a bit surprised when I saw that the Tigers trailed only USC in the position rankings. That's impressive stuff -- and it's largely because of the 14 wideouts that the Tigers who have been drafted since 2001.

Tight end: Tied for 40th with 10 points. The Tigers have had only one all-conference pick (Robert Royal) and two draft picks at tight end (Royal and Keith Zinger) since the 2000-01 season.

Offensive line: Tied for 21st with 94 points. Although the Tigers have had nine all-conference picks and seven draft picks from the line since 2000-01, it has been a bit of a disappointment overall -- which is part of the reason why Jeff Grimes is now coaching the group. The Tigers have not had a first-round offensive lineman in this time period and only had one second-rounder.

Linebacker: Tied for 22nd with 60 points. I realize that LSU's defensive star power has been on the line and in the secondary, but I kind of expected LSU to fare a bit better here. But the Tigers had just seven all-conference linebackers and five draft picks -- only two of whom (Kevin Minter and Kelvin Sheppard) went in rounds 1-3.

Defensive back: Third with 218 points. Well, they aren't DBU after all, but the Tigers did fare extremely well. With six All-Americans and four national awards, LSU threatened Oklahoma for second on the list, but finished a ways behind champion Ohio State.

Kicker: Tied for 27th with 28 points. The Tigers did have a consensus All-America kicker (Josh Jasper in 2010), but had just two all-conference kickers and one punter. Seventh-round pick Donnie Jones became the only draftee at either position in 2004.